China said the talks had “laid the foun­da­tion” to re­solve mu­tual con­cerns on trade.

“We will prop­erly han­dle the China- US eco­nomic and trade fric­tions” this year, com­merce min­is­ter Zhong Shan said, ac­cord­ing to a Satur­day re­port by state me­dia out­let Xin­hua.

Zhong said Bei­jing will also pro­mote out­side in­vest­ment, work to pass a for­eign in­vest­ment law and im­prove its dis­pute res­o­lu­tion sys­tem, Xin­hua re­ported.

China’s pol­i­cy­mak­ers have long promised a more open and free mar­ket with bet­ter pro­tec­tions for for­eign in­vestors, but

good on those pledges — lead­ing the Euro­pean Union Cham­ber of Com­merce in China to coin the term “prom­ise fa­tigue”.

Zhong said China’s neg­a­tive list — which restricts in­vest­ment in cer­tain in­dus­tries — will be fur­ther slimmed down, while Bei­jing also in­tends to ex­pand eco­nomic sec­tors open for for­eign in­vest­ment with­out the need for a Chi­nese joint-ven­ture part­ner.

- lined a push for for­eign in­vest­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing, high­tech in­dus­tries and in­vest­ment in China’s in­ner re­gions — pledges which are sim­i­lar to prom­ises made last year.

Push­ing Bei­jing to im­ple­ment eco­nomic re­forms and fur­ther open up ar­eas for US in­vest­ment is a fo­cus in trade ne­go­ti­a­tions with Wash­ing­ton.